Research

I work in moral and political philosophy. The theoretical core of my research concerns reasons, authority and legitimacy, engaging with philosophers like Joseph Raz and Stephen Darwall. In general, how can agents affect the reasons of other agents, particularly through their speech acts? When can the state legitimately give new reasons to its subjects by commanding them? Some of my work on these questions can be found in my doctoral thesis (“Liberal Theories of Political Authority“) and my 2025 paper in Law and Philosophy (“The Sources of Authoritative Exclusion“). 

This core drives several applied projects. I am interested in the reason-giving force of civil disobedience (see my 2024 paper in Philosophy & Public Affairs, “The Role of Civility in Political Disobedience“), the powers possessed by persistent minorities under majority rule, and the legitimacy of embedded ethics in higher education. 

In light of my work teaching embedded ethics to computer science students since 2021, I have also developed interests in the ethics of technology and data science. I have projects underway about anthropomorphization, AI alignment, and algorithmic discrimination, with initial work presented at several conferences and colloquia. 

Finally, I also do empirical educational research about embedded ethics, including published work with my colleagues in the Embedded Ethics Education Initiative and a new project underway with collaborators in the Department of Statistical Sciences measuring the effect of ethics modules on how students reason about short ethical vignettes.  

Publications

2025

  1. Steve Coyne, “The Sources of Authoritative Exclusion,” Law and Philosophy 44: 269–293. (penultimate draft available here)

2024

  1. Steve Coyne, “The Role of Civility in Political Disobedience,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 52(2): 221-50.
  2. Diane Horton, Sheila McIlraith, David Liu, Steven Coyne, Nina Wang, “Do Embedded Ethics Modules Have Impact Beyond the Classroom?”, in Proceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE): 533-539.

2016

  1. Steve Coyne, “Coercion and Obligation as Exercises of Authority,” Jurisprudence 7(3): 575-92.

 

Papers In Progress (e-mail me for a draft)

  1. A paper on the legitimacy of ethics education (draft complete)
  2. A paper on majority rule in democratic systems (in progress)
  3. A paper on epistemic and practical authority in Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (in progress)